Wildflower (TV series)


Wildflower is a Philippine revenge drama television series starring Maja Salvador, together with an ensemble cast. The show originally aired on ABS-CBN, and worldwide on The Filipino Channel, from February 13, 2017 to February 9, 2018.

Series overview

The story revolves around Lily Cruz who falls victim to the ruthless Ardiente family. Emilia Torillo, the de facto matriarch of the Ardiente family, ordered an assassin to murder Camia Cruz and Dante Cruz, Lily's parents. Unbeknownst to Emilia, Lily survived the massacre. Lily was brought to Prianka Aguas, a billionaire businesswoman, who adopted her. Lily changed her identity to become Ivy Aguas, a strong-willed woman. She returns to Poblacion Ardiente as Ivy to avenge her parents and everyone else who were victimized by the evil Ardiente family.

Season 1 (2017)

The story follows Lily Cruz, a beautiful heiress who wants justice for her father Dante's death and mother Camia's assault and resulting insanity, by seeking revenge against the evil Ardiente family, a powerful political dynasty in the fictional province that bears their name. The Ardiente family is the most powerful political dynasty in the province under the jurisdiction of the governor, Julio Ardiente, and his daughter, Emilia, the mayor of the municipality. With the entitlement of the powerful, Raul assaults Camia prompting Dante to file rape charges against him. Lily's world crumbles when Dante suspiciously dies from a heart attack and she witnesses her mother's rape. Though targeted to be killed herself, the assassins feel compassion for the 9-year old and frees her instead.
Prianka Aguas legally adopts Lily and raises her to become tough, providing her with the resources to seek justice for her parents. With a billion dollar conglomerate behind her, Ivy is a magnet for the Ardientes who are preparing their campaign for the gubernatorial and congressional re-elections.

Season 2 (2017)

Ivy seduces the Ardientes' weakest link, Arnaldo. He becomes obsessed with her and drives him near crazy. After several retaliatory attempts by Emilia against Ivy fails, Emilia is committed to a psychiatric facility. Third, she unseats Julio Ardiente from his re-elected governor seat and weakens his powerhold in the province and then robs him of the only person he loves, his grandson, Arnaldo. However, throughout the sequence of events, the Ardientes have determined that Ivy is an adversary. Thus, they had her disposed of, by being buried alive in a wooden-coffin. She miraculously escapes death and is gonna return with a vengeance.

Season 3 (2017)

In a carefully orchestrated hijacking, Ivy gatecrashes a celebration being held by the Ardientes and reveals her real identity as Lily Cruz, to the bemusement of the Ardientes who supervised her "burial" in the cemetery. Through a series of activities, she cripples Ardientes' powerful influence but a new hidden enemy is suddenly surfacing. It is later on revealed that this is Helena Montoya, the real mother of Emilia Ardiente. Also, known in the criminal world as "Red Dragon", she controls the country's largest crime syndicate operations. Notwithstanding the sinister résumé, Helena is no match to Ivy's superior skills, and after several conflicts, Lily brings Red Dragon's operations to a halt.

Season 4 (2017–18)

With Diego and Lily marrying off, Arnaldo suddenly came in to the resort where they were honeymooning. A confrontation ensued with latter reaching his limit and finally committed suicide in front of the two. In the mental asylum, Emilia is haunted by the evil ghosts of Helena and Arnaldo exhorting her to avenge their deaths by killing Lily and Diego. Later on, she regains her sanity and obtains the support of the Asian syndicate with the password her mother gave her. Lily gets hint of this and talks to the syndicate leader about the elderly Ardiente ordering the murder of Helena Montoya/"Red Dragon", to which they both agree that the daughter Emilia should know of. Meanwhile, they also discover valuable information about a mass grave the Ardiente began using in the mid-50s when the family first seized power. Jepoy and Ana contact local media about the mass grave and stir up the neighbors to do the same. The media frenzy covering the atrocities committed by the Ardientes embolden whistleblowers and other victims to speak up, including former accomplices and political supporters like Natalie, ex-bodyguards, former assassins, and Judge Lustre.
A People Power revolution topples the Ardiente family. With solid evidences and witnesses no longer afraid to speak out, the people of Ardiente file cases of multiple murders, frustrated homicides, Estafa, plunder charges that would send them to prison for a long time, but Julio and Emilia escape capture. Their joy does not last long when Julio assassinates and kills Diego with a sniper rifle, and escape once again to a Triad safe house.
Emilia finally realizes her father's direct hand in the murders of her aunt, Claire, and mother Helena; and that he never respected her as an equal. As Lily tries to stop Julio from escaping, Emilia comes face-to-face with her father, shooting him several times until he apparently died, but not before retaliating against her daughter, shooting her in the spine. Later, Emilia now a paraplegic can be seen serving her time in prison. Lily then visits her extending an Olive branch and forgives her. Meanwhile, Venus, the adopted daughter of Helena Montoya a.k.a. "Red Dragon" apparently rescued Julio from dying only to have him killed by herself as a revenge for the latter killing her adoptive mother, through burning via blowtorch. This character was played by actress Karylle, real-life daughter of Zsazsa Padilla.

Cast and characters

Main

;Guest cast

Filming

Filming for Wildflower began on December 5, 2016.

Casting

was the first choice to play the role of Natalie. However, she refused because the role would require cutting her hair short. The role eventually went to Roxanne Barcelo.

Broadcast

Wildflower aired on ABS-CBN's Primetime Bida evening block at 5:45 PM PST, before TV Patrol and worldwide via TFC.

Timeslot

Wildflower was originally planned to replace the long running drama Doble Kara as part of Kapamilya Gold afternoon block. However, due to the longing request of the fans, the management eventually decided to air the series in the evening block. Two days before the premiere, the timeslot was announced on February 10, 2017.

Reruns

The first 30 episodes of Wildflower have been made available on YouTube.
Reruns of the show's episodes airs on Jeepney TV.
On March 18, 2020, ABS-CBN announced that Wildflower will also rerun its episodes beginning March 23, 2020 via the network's Primetime Bida evening block, replacing A Soldier's Heart, as part of ABS-CBN's temporary programming changes due to the community quarantine done to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic This rerun was abruptly cut due to the temporary closure of ABS-CBN following the cease and desist order issued by the National Telecommunications Commission on account of its franchise expiration. As of June 15, 2020, Wildflower, no longer a replacement of A Soldier's Heart, the show returned on June 15, 2020. Wildflower is currently airing rerun its episodes in a different airtime.

Extension

ABS-CBN has announced that Wildflower will be extended until February 9, 2018. The series was said to be extended until March 2018 for Book 5 as announced by Vice Ganda in her late night show Gandang Gabi Vice, but it was pulled out to give way for The Blood Sisters.

Reception

Wildflower became a very controversial series during its run, with its unconventional depiction of nepotism, schizophrenia and human rights violations on primetime programming, and it even trended on social media. Its pilot episode in 2017 got 20.1%, 5.7% higher than rival show Wowowin. The show peaked in its October 10, 2017 episode with a 35.2% nationwide rating, placing it only behind ABS-CBN's TV Patrol and FPJ's Ang Probinsyano that same night as the country's most watched TV broadcast. The same figure also ranked Wildflower as the country's highest-rated TV show on the pre-primetime slot since the Philippines switched to nationwide TV ratings system in 2009.
The show ended in 2018 notching a final nationwide rating of 24.3% in its finale.

Accolades